The Girl Who Dared to Think 7: The Girl Who Dared to Fight

I gritted my teeth in frustration. Dinah’s reticence to help us, to even reveal her identity to us, had been a problem in the past, and today, of all days, was when I needed that trend to end. Luckily, I knew exactly what she wanted—and how to give it to her.

Dinah, all I need is a way in and what you’ve got on that integration room. I’m sure you’ve found blueprints by now, and I know you’re smart enough to have downloaded them to your pad before fleeing. So how about this: if you meet us where you intend to escape the Core, and give us the schematics, you can go with Tian to the roof and wait for Alex and the Patrians to come rescue you. Deal?

Another pause, and one that had me wincing. Not because of Dinah, but because of Eric’s awkward and tentative lash-throwing. The man had never had a handle on the mechanics of it, and even though his line did stick, the execution of his throw and jump was just terrifyingly bad, making me concerned for how well he was going to fare at this. I made a mental note to stay close to him, in case he wound up in any trouble, and then motioned for Quess to go.

Deal. And you’re lucky you’re right—I do have the schematics for that room. And, I’m not making any promises, but I might be able to find you a way into it. Stand by for a second. I need some time to do a little creative hacking.

Take your time, I thought as I watched Quess awkwardly swing out through the door. Quess had a great many skills, but like Eric, lashing wasn’t one of them. Luckily, however, he’d improved significantly since joining the Knights. But significant improvement didn’t necessarily translate to being a good lasher, and Quess was still very stiff at it.

Thankfully, Maddox would be keeping an eye on him.

I waited until everyone was clear before doing one last check down the halls, making sure we were alone. Then I leaned out, threw a lash end to connect just over the door, and surrendered my weight to the harness, reeling myself up to the control panel on the outside of the door and taking a moment to seal it behind us. It wouldn’t help if Sadie and Sage were tracking us using Lionel’s code, but it would slow down anyone in the halls coming after us, and that was something.

I kicked off the wall and threw my other line to a nearby arch, and within moments, my team and I were moving up the side of the Citadel.

It was hard not to move quickly. I’d lived in the Citadel my entire life; I knew every buttress, arch, and line of the structure by heart from lashing around them when I was younger. Not to mention, scaling it was far easier than scaling the Tower, as there were obstacles in the way to hook onto for gaining momentum.

But I kept close to Eric, moving at his lumbering speed while I waited for Dinah to resume talking. Seconds had already bled into minutes, and if it weren’t for the buzzing along the tendrils of my net, I would’ve assumed something had happened to her.

When she finally did start speaking again, we had already ascended twenty floors, and had maybe another forty before we hit the ceiling above. Okay, I think I have the rudimentary outline of a plan. I want you to get to hatch 54-Q. It’s facing the south side of the Tower, up near the top of it. Wait there for me to exit, and I’ll fill you in on the rest of the plan when I join you. How long will it take you to get there?

I paused in my lashing long enough to eye the distance and my friends, then did some fast guessing. Maybe twenty minutes, if we’re lucky.

Then let’s hope we get lucky. And that my bum foot doesn’t get me caught between now and then. I’ve got to end the transmission now before someone stumbles onto it or me, so… See you in twenty minutes.

Just be careful, I managed to get out right before she terminated the link.

I took a deep breath, unnerved by how quickly she’d ended the transmission, and put my concern for Dinah to one side. There wasn’t anything I could do for her where I was, so the only option now was to keep moving forward and hope that she could stay under the Core’s radar long enough to give us entry and make her escape.

Because if she didn’t, we were all screwed.





35





For once I was spot on with my time guesstimate, because nineteen and a half minutes later, we were all dangling from the side of the Core, waiting for hatch 54-Q to open. Our passage between the Core and Citadel had gone largely unnoticed, partially because the lighting from the Core wasn’t enough to fully beat back the darkness, but mostly because the bridges and platforms outside the two structures were completely devoid of life. It was as if some great and terrible presence had plucked every human being up and out of the Tower, leaving only us.

I should’ve counted my lucky stars that there were no sentinels patrolling, but the question their absence created only left me feeling deeply afraid. If they weren’t out here, where were they, and what was Sage using them for?

I had a handful of ideas, none of them good: They’d been moved to Cogstown to remount the attack on them. They were moving to the greeneries and killing the citizens there. Sage had ordered them into the Core to defend it.

I knew there was a chance that the lack of sentinels in the atrium area was a result of the destruction of Alice’s download pad in the Attic, but it was a slim one. It had been hours since I’d done it, and I was certain that a man who’d spent three hundred years trying to put this plan together had been prudent enough to have a backup route stashed away. I had no idea how long that other plan might have taken to set up, but odds were if they didn’t have it up and operational now, they would soon.

My grim thoughts were broken by a sudden hiss from the hatch, and I tensed in alarm, one hand going to my baton. I was dangling to the left of the hole and was the first to see a flash of silvery hair and crystal-clear blue eyes—wide and furtive—as the hatch swung open.

“Hello, Dinah,” I said, letting go of the baton. “Are you okay?”

“No, I am damn well not okay!” she snarled, pulling herself forward to the edge. “I—oh, my. This is very high.”

I blinked in surprise at the older woman’s sudden change in tone, amazed at how she could go from anger to trepidation in just a matter of seconds. The elderly woman was now staring down past the fingers she had curled around the ledge to the dark depths below. The fires from the Council Room had died down, but there was still a deep red glow from the embers of where it remained, marking just how far away the floor below was.

“You know what, I made a mistake,” Dinah said abruptly with a nod, her voice now high-pitched. “I think I’ll just take my chances and walk out of here. There’s got to be a crew heading somewhere. I’ll just forge some credentials and—”

She had started backing away as she spoke, and I suppressed a curse as I realized how quickly she could move when properly motivated. Before I could even stop her, she was out of reach—and still talking to herself. I exchanged an irritated look with Maddox, as we had intended to pass her one of the spare harnesses and help her put it on before we got through the hole, but now that she was heading back in, we were going to have to chase her down and convince her that leaving with Tian and Liam using the lash lines was the only option.

“Liam, you and Tian stay here and make sure this hatch doesn’t close, all right? Maddox, give Tian the Patrian communication device and follow. The rest of you come with me. We’ve got to get to her before she accidently gets caught.”

I climbed into the shaft while I handed out orders and didn’t stick around long enough to see if my friends would do what I said. Dinah was still backing away in front of me, sliding a cane I hadn’t noticed before along with her as she crawled backward. I pursued her as quickly as I could on my hands and knees, trying to catch her before she reached the end, but she managed to scramble out of the vent opening and to the floor, dropping out of sight.